WTWN #53 - If Fifty is Nifty, what is Sixty?
As I approach my Diamond Jubilee, "Sixty and sassy" doesn't seem to fit. But thank God sixty is not the new thirty.
First, some quotations:
"Time is the longest distance between two places."
― Tennessee Williams
"How did it get so late so soon?"
― Dr. Seuss
"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."
― Kurt Vonnegut
In two months, I’ll turn sixty. I want to reflect on this before it hits. It's unimaginable I could get this old.
In Chinese culture, sixty years marks five cycles through the 12-year zodiac. There are ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches (animals), so the combination of heavenly stem and animal repeats every sixty years, representing a cyclical concept of time.
Yep. I’m right back where I started, in the year of the dragon.
I was born in 1964 and have circumnavigated the zodiac five times. I’ve entered a period of enhanced readiness for change.
I’m ready to cut the shenanigans and begin anew.
It's been twenty years since I celebrated my 39th birthday with annual events in Minneapolis (yep, multiple 39th birthdays). One of those shindigs was written up in Spin Magazine as one of America's 101 Wildest Parties. My parties were held in clubs and typically featured 4 to 5 live bands and a few hundred guests. They continued until I was forty-four.
After all, forty was the new thirty.
I never had black balloons or my name on a tombstone-shaped cake, but as my actual 40th birthday receded into history, I began to think it was time to grow up.
Significant celebrations often mark birthdays ending in zeros. I didn’t have a big party for my 50th but marked it with one or two friends and a glass of bubbly.
But a big party for sixty? Do I need one? Sixty is just a number. As I become a sexagenarian, everything feels like icing on the cake, not a downhill slide. I lived my crazy life when I was young and got it out of my system. It's time to get down to business, the sometimes-unexciting meat of life.
But let me tell you something, honey: I ain’t missin’ a thing.
I'm not missing a thing because life is sweeter than ever. I have an amazing and supportive wife and a beautiful family, including two daughters and a 14-month-old son. Counterintuitively, having a toddler around the house makes me feel young again. He certainly keeps me on my toes.
Sixty may be just a number. But it’s a number hard to get my head around.
Thirty years ago is not so long for someone my age. In 1994, OJ Simpson rolled down the I-5 freeway in Orange County in a white Ford Bronco in the slowest police chase in history. That year, as I turned thirty, I was winding down a career in the coffee business. I was liberally imbibing Windsor Canadian Whiskey along with my Diet Coke. I had a party that ended with a software developer throwing an empty 5-gallon beer ball off the balcony of my third-floor apartment in downtown Minneapolis. Good times.
But if thirty years is a drop in the bucket and time is speeding up, I’ll soon be older than my father is now. Longevity statistics—the average life expectancy of white American men is 78—suggest that by the time I’m ninety, I’ll already be dead for twelve years.
Sorry for the math, but no matter what you tell yourself, you're no longer "middle-aged" at sixty.
I enjoyed parties in my younger days, but in recent years, on my birthday, I have mostly wished for peace and quiet, a time to read, write, have a special dinner with my family, and record my birthday audio journal entry, which I’ve kept since 1980. Generally, I have wished for more of the things I already enjoy.
I'm not so much opposed to parties as to formality. I'm not good at socializing and just “spending time” with people. I may write about that someday to discover why I'm an introvert. I continue to struggle with gregariousness despite mounds of evidence that solid friendships add to our resilience and are a vital indicator of our longevity.
This brings me to the two most significant things about turning sixty.
First, I know what I want from life. I'll just leave that right here.
Second, it means retirement is just around the corner. When I started working at sixteen in 1980, my career was some distant, intangible thing in the future. But now, I'm nearly done. Even if I work until I am 75, which I don't plan to do. I’m unabashedly aware that my next career move is retirement.
I have plenty of things to do without spending 40 hours a week advancing someone else's agenda. Retirement funds and pensions will materialize for me sooner or later. When I retire, I plan to devote myself full-time to being a writer.
On the downside, health issues have started to surface, and I've lost more than a few friends in the past couple of years. Sixty is young enough that it's usually my parents' generation we are losing, but enough of my high school and college classmates have passed away recently that I'd prefer not to enumerate; I’m just grateful that both my parents are still alive.
Plans for celebrating my 60th are still underway. But without a doubt, what I’m most looking forward to is having my family sing Happy Birthday to me in the morning, having breakfast with them, and maybe having extra time to read, write, and reflect. Then, on the Saturday following my birthday, perhaps to have a meal, a mocktail or two, and a bite of cake with a few friends on my deck. A big party is not appealing to me.
Getting older is so easy; anyone can do it. To all my fellow 1964 dragons turning sixty this year, happy birthday! I hope you enjoy some transitions or new beginnings. Let's be grateful we're still here after this long, strange trip and hope for many more years.